The cloud hosting industry continues its rapid expansion, with overall expenditure on cloud computing services expected to exceed , up from .

Within this massive market, managed cloud hosting providers like Cloudways are establishing themselves as essential intermediaries between enterprise-grade infrastructure and small-to-medium businesses seeking simplified solutions.

The broader cloud infrastructure market remains dominated by tech giants, with Amazon commanding 30% of the cloud hosting market in 2025, followed by Microsoft Azure at 21% and Google Cloud Platform at approximately 12%.

However, these statistics reflect the Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) segment rather than the specialized managed hosting niche where Cloudways operates.

Cloudways has positioned itself distinctly within the managed cloud hosting segment, earning recognition as the “#1 SMB Hosting Provider on G2” and serving over 100,000 businesses.

The achievement is particularly significant given the fragmented nature of the managed hosting market, where customer satisfaction and ease of use often outweigh raw market share metrics.

The company’s strategic focus on performance optimization and customer success has yielded measurable results. In 2024, clients utilizing Cloudways Autonomous achieved notable improvements, with one case study showing a 20% reduction in downtime, zero downtime achievement, and a 100%+ revenue increase.

The platform’s technical infrastructure reflects industry-leading standards, with 99.99% uptime guarantees and ultrafast servers designed for business growth. Such commitments are particularly crucial as businesses increasingly depend on consistent online performance for revenue generation.

Cloudways’ business model leverages partnerships with established cloud providers, partnering with top cloud providers like DigitalOcean, Linode, Vultr, AWS, and Google Cloud to deliver exceptional performance, scalability, and reliability.

The approach allows the company to offer enterprise-grade infrastructure while maintaining the simplified management interface that appeals to its target market.

The acquisition by DigitalOcean has influenced the company’s strategic direction, with the range of cloud hosting providers being trimmed down to focus on DigitalOcean, AWS, and Google Cloud. This consolidation appears designed to streamline operations while maintaining access to premium infrastructure options.

Cloudways has invested significantly in automation and scalability solutions, including the development of Cloudways Autonomous, which represents a shift toward hands-off auto-scaling capabilities.

The company’s focus on emerging technologies and performance optimization positions it well within the managed hosting segment, even as it operates in a market dominated by infrastructure giants.

While Cloudways has established itself as a notable player in the managed WordPress hosting space, the current data shows they occupy a specific niche rather than dominating the entire industry.

According to W3Techs usage statistics, Cloudways is used by 0.6% of all websites as of July 2025, positioning them as a specialized managed hosting provider rather than a market leader.

The managed WordPress hosting market operates within the broader web hosting services sector, which was valued at $126.41 billion in 2024 and is projected to grow from $149.30 billion in 2025 to $527.07 billion by 2032.

WordPress itself powers 43.4% of all websites globally, creating a substantial market for specialized WordPress hosting services.

Cloudways has carved out a distinctive position in the managed hosting landscape by focusing on cloud infrastructure partnerships. The company collaborates with major cloud providers including:

This multi-cloud approach differentiates Cloudways from traditional managed WordPress hosts and has contributed to their reported 99.99% uptime performance.

Recent 2025 testing data reveals impressive performance metrics:

Independent testing in 2025 showed:

The keyword “cloudways hosting review 2025” returns results from numerous authoritative hosting review websites, indicating significant industry attention and coverage. Major review sites covering Cloudways include:

The consensus across review sites for 2025 indicates:

While Cloudways holds a solid position, other significant players in the managed WordPress hosting space include:

A significant development affecting Cloudways’ market position was its acquisition by DigitalOcean. This strategic move:

Recent improvements include:

The shift toward cloud-based hosting solutions has benefited Cloudways significantly. As more websites require:

Cloudways’ positioning becomes increasingly valuable in the market.

With WordPress continuing to power over 43% of websites globally, the managed WordPress hosting market remains robust. This provides a stable foundation for Cloudways’ continued growth.

WooCommerce has established itself as a dominant force in the e-commerce platform landscape, with significant market share across different metrics.

In 2025, WooCommerce established itself as the leading ecommerce software platform, making up 33% of the total market share. Shopify and Wix came second and third, with 18.1% and 12.4%, respectively.

However, when examining the top-tier websites, the competitive landscape shows more nuanced dynamics. The current 2025 market share for WooCommerce is 13% of the top 1 million sites using e-commerce technologies:

This represents a decrease from its 16% market share in 2024 and also suggests that Shopify take over WooCommerce as the market leader between 2024 and 2025.

The reach of WooCommerce extends across millions of websites globally. 3.5% of websites are powered by WooCommerce among 24 million websites across the globe. 5,106,506 live websites currently run on a CMS powered by WooCommerce, demonstrating its massive adoption in the WordPress ecosystem.

The cloud hosting sector is experiencing remarkable growth, which directly benefits WooCommerce stores seeking scalable solutions. The fastest-growing type of web hosting is cloud hosting, which has a compound annual growth rate of 18.3% from 2019 to 2025. This growth trajectory creates significant opportunities for WooCommerce businesses to leverage cloud infrastructure.

In the cloud hosting market, the Google Cloud platform is becoming increasingly popular. It is used by 38.6 million websites across the globe including Coca-Cola, Snapchat, positioning it as a major player in the cloud hosting ecosystem suitable for WooCommerce deployments.

Amazon Web Services provides robust infrastructure options for WooCommerce stores. This plan provides 1GB of RAM, 1 Core processor, 25GB storage, and 1TB of bandwidth, making it a cost-effective choice for hosting your online store.

For enterprise-level deployments, Aurora – MySQL-compatible database engine designed for performance. Up to 5X faster than standard MySQL on RDS. DynamoDB – NoSQL database service capable of handling large volumes of data and traffic.

WooCommerce stores have specific resource requirements that cloud hosting platforms must address. WooCommerce suggests increasing it to 256MB, but it will depend on your site.

WordPress databases have a tendency to get quite bloated over time with old versions of pages, so it’s a good idea to regularly clean up your data.

Cloud hosting providers are offering multi-cloud approaches to serve WooCommerce stores effectively. Cloudways offers the freedom to choose from five different cloud providers which include DigitalOcean, Linode, Vultr, AWS, and Google Cloud. Each cloud infrastructure provider offers a unique combination of pricing and data center locations.

Modern cloud hosting solutions for WooCommerce focus on performance optimization. The WooCommerce VPS utilizes cloud technology and delivers consistent performance due to the guaranteed CPU power, RAM, and storage.

Flexible Amazon cloud compute (EC2) with configurable storage/bandwidth across 28 datacenters. AWS supports dynamic vertical scaling with options to both upgrade and downgrade server resources. Select the perfect fit from their Standard and Compute Optimized server lineup.

Google Compute Engine (GCE) is an extremely powerful cloud hosting infrastructure with the efficient performance that comes with Google’s brand name. With 28 datacenters worldwide, it provides extensive global coverage for WooCommerce stores.

Popular cloud emphasizing consistent performance across 25 datacenters. Choose Linode if you wish top quality performance at a pocket—friendly budget.

While cloud hosting offers superior scalability, cost considerations remain important. For small businesses or personal blogs, the cost of hosting on AWS may not justify the benefits. Bluehost hosting offers more affordable and straightforward pricing plans that include essential features like email hosting, cloud hosting and customer support.

Technical knowledge requirements can be a barrier for smaller WooCommerce store owners who may lack the expertise to manage complex cloud infrastructure configurations.

The continued dominance of WordPress in the web development space supports WooCommerce’s growth. WordPress market share is 43.4% across all websites as of April 2025. Among the websites with a known CMS (content management system), that percentage is 61.3%.

The market is seeing the emergence of specialized hosting solutions. Powerful and reliable WooCommerce Optimized Managed Cloud Hosting with LiteSpeed Cache, Auto Installer, Staging Sites & WP-CLI support.

The intersection of WooCommerce and cloud hosting represents a significant opportunity in the e-commerce infrastructure market. With WooCommerce maintaining strong market share and cloud hosting experiencing 18.3% annual growth, the combination creates a powerful ecosystem for online businesses.

PHP continues to maintain its position as the most dominant server-side programming language on the web. According to current statistics, as their server-side technology, making it the undisputed leader in web development languages.

A significant factor in PHP’s dominance is the widespread adoption of WordPress, which is built on PHP. .

This means that nearly every other website on the internet runs on WordPress, directly contributing to PHP’s massive market share.

The interconnected nature of WordPress and PHP creates a symbiotic relationship where , further solidifying PHP’s position in the e-commerce hosting market.

Developer Survey Insights

While PHP maintains its web dominance, developer adoption patterns show interesting trends. According to the Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2024, which collected insights from over 65,000 developers, .

Among professional developers, the number is nearly identical at . More notably, as their primary language.

This discrepancy between web usage (79.2%) and developer adoption (18.2%) suggests that PHP’s dominance is driven more by legacy systems and established platforms like WordPress rather than new development projects.

The e-commerce sector continues to drive PHP hosting demand. Data reflects , with an average of .

The United States hosts approximately , with small businesses making up a significant portion of this market.

The hosting industry has evolved significantly, with cloud-based solutions becoming increasingly popular for PHP applications. Leading providers now offer multiple cloud infrastructure options:

Cloudways has positioned itself as a leader in managed PHP hosting by offering .

The platform is , allowing developers to test and deploy applications with the latest PHP versions.

Modern PHP hosting providers offer , though typically at an additional cost. These managed solutions eliminate the need for users to worry about updates, initial server setup, or maintenance.

Several traditional hosting providers continue to dominate the PHP hosting space:

The free PHP hosting segment serves as an entry point for developers and small projects. stands out as the top recommended free PHP hosting provider, offering .

Other notable free PHP hosting providers include:

Modern PHP hosting providers are keeping pace with PHP development by supporting the latest versions:

Leading PHP hosting providers focus on performance through:

Global Web Hosting Market Context

The PHP hosting market operates within the broader web hosting industry context. At the start of 2025, there were . The .

Hosting Type Distribution

The hosting market shows diverse preferences:

While PHP maintains web dominance, the declining interest among new developers presents both challenges and opportunities:

The shift toward cloud-based hosting creates opportunities for PHP hosting providers:

Despite changing developer preferences, PHP hosting demand is expected to remain strong due to:

The PHP hosting industry will likely evolve toward:

• Better developer tools and staging environments
• Stronger security features to address growing cyber threats

PHP hosting remains a cornerstone of the web hosting industry, driven by PHP’s 79.2% market share among websites. While developer adoption rates show a decline, the massive installed base of WordPress sites and growing e-commerce sector ensure continued demand for PHP hosting services.

While Cloudways cannot be characterized as leading the overall cloud hosting industry—a distinction that belongs to AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud—the company has established a strong position within the managed cloud hosting niche.

Its combination of user-friendly interfaces, performance optimization, and strategic partnerships with major cloud providers creates a compelling value proposition for small and medium-sized businesses seeking enterprise-grade hosting without the complexity of direct cloud management.

The company’s success in serving over 100,000 businesses and maintaining high customer satisfaction ratings suggests that its approach addresses genuine market needs.

However, claims of industry leadership should be contextualized within the managed hosting segment rather than the broader cloud infrastructure market, where established tech giants maintain dominant positions through comprehensive service offerings and massive infrastructure investments.

As the cloud hosting market continues to evolve, Cloudways’ focus on simplification, performance, and customer success positions it as a significant player in its chosen niche, even if it operates within the shadow of industry giants who define the broader market landscape.

TIME BUSINESS NEWS